The Earth’s surface is experiencing unprecedented change. Humanity’s growing population, expanding land-use footprint, and increasing global emissions of atmospheric greenhouse gases affect a vast number of species on Earth and the functioning of virtually all ecosystems. Given the vital interactions and feedbacks between the Earth’s land surface and climate, measurements...
Increasing forest stress and tree mortality has been directly linked to combinations of drought and high temperatures. The climatic changes expected during the next decades – large increases in mean temperature, increased heat waves, and significant long-term regional drying in the western USA – will likely increase chronic forest stress...
Measurements that link surface conditions and climate can provide critical information on important biospheric changes occurring in the Earth system. As the direct driving force of energy and water fluxes at the surface-atmosphere interface, land surface temperature (LST) provides information on physical processes of land-cover change and energy-balance changes that...
Disturbance processes of various types substantially modify ecosystem carbon dynamics both temporally and spatially, and constitute a fundamental part of larger landscape-level dynamics. Forests typically lose carbon for several years to several decades following severe disturbance, but our understanding of the duration and dynamics of post-disturbance forest carbon fluxes remains...
Contemporary forest management involves a more extensive and diverse suite of management objectives than was the case throughout much of the Twentieth Century. Heightened public and political awareness of local and global biodiversity decline, and interest in arresting these trends, has increased the emphasis on broad-based biodiversity conservation as an...
The application of modern land management practices beginning at the turn of the 20th century is widely believed to have dramatically transformed forest landscapes of the inland Pacific Northwest. Restoring historical conditions to make forests resilient to future climate and disturbance regimes is a major goal of federal forest managers....
Given the vital role of forest ecosystems in landscape pattern and process, it is important to quantify the effects, feedbacks, and uncertainties associated with forest disturbance dynamics. In western North America, insects and wildfires are both native disturbances that have influenced forests for millennia, and both are projected to increase...
Early seral forests regenerating from stand-replacing disturbances provide unique habitat for many species in productive, temperate forest landscapes and contribute to supporting biodiversity. Population declines in some species associated with early seral forests have prompted concerns about the conservation of these habitats, particularly the characteristic structural and compositional complexity associated...
Summertime low clouds are common in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), but spatiotemporal patterns have not been characterized. We show the first maps of low cloudiness for the western PNW and North Pacific Ocean using a 22‐year satellite‐derived record of monthly mean low cloudiness frequency for May through September and supplemented...
Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is a commercially and ecologically important tree species native to western North America. The foliar pathogens Phaeocryptopus gaeumannii, the causal agent of Swiss Needle Cast, and Rhabdocline species, the causal agents of Rhabdocline needle cast, are two important pathogens specific to Douglas-fir. These pathogens are highly influenced...